Listen to Jackson Browne’s New Song, ‘Downhill From Everywhere’

Jackson Browne unveiled a new song, “Downhill From Everywhere,” which ties in with the annual Earth Day event.

The song is included in the new documentary The Story of Plastic, which will premiere on Earth Day tomorrow and explores the damage done to the planet by the manufacture and abandonment of plastics across three continents.

“Plastic is a great and really useful thing,” Browne told Rolling Stonein a new interview. “But it’s just absurd that we use it to deliver things, just to deliver water to people in packaging. That stuff will be around for hundreds of years and does not biodegrade. So, this movement has got a lot of attention and a lot of support. Because it’s so obvious to people that it’s a problem. It’s no longer something that can be sort of swept under the rug.”

He argued that the biggest problem in creating change was that “everybody only wants to do shit that’s easy. ... You have to tell yourself that even when you’re thirsty, you’re not going to reach over and grab that plastic bottle that you were offered by somebody.”

You can listen to “Downhill From Everywhere” below.

Despite his emphasis on much more needing to be done, Browne suggested that the reduction in pollution caused by the coronavirus pandemic offers an insight into how things could be.

“People have gotten a glimpse of what it’s like to have no smog," he noted. "Nature has gotten a break, and it’s visible. You can see it. People are suddenly saying, ‘Oh, yeah, this is what it’s like when the skies are clear and birds are singing!’ People in Spain were telling me, ‘We saw dolphins swimming, and we never see that.’ The natural world is sort of coming back.”